Week4

Please be well-prepared!

Again, this week I've learned many things from experienced teachers and educators and also learned by doing. I've studied two assigned articles and realized why and how technology integration should be encouraged in educational settings. Clearly, technology can assist in English skills improvement as well as encourage students' interaction, participation and collaboration. To implement technology into classroom, a well-prepared lesson plan is necessary. A lesson plan not only guides teachers, but it also helps teachers become more confident and comfortable while teaching the lesson. When less stressed, a happy teacher and happy students enjoy together!

In addition, it is an article "Weaving the Web into an EAP Reading Program" by Ellinger et al (n.d.) that has reminded me about "flexibility and adaptability". It is a fact that the websites change regulary and a well-planned teacher has to admit this changing nature of the Internet. Teachers have to learn to adapt the material or revise a classroom activity accordingly. Moreover, Ellinger et al (n.d) found that flexibility of the material is important to support learning styles or needs of each individual learner. I agree that if we aim to integrate technology such as the Internet into the classroom, we should revamp the materials and learning activities in order to make learning experience meaningful and enjoyable for our students.

One more thing I've come to realize while working on writing a lesson plan with technology is that "I need to include a back up plan." It is possible that technology may not work correctly when we need it. For example, the Internet connection may fail, or the low speed Internet may become a problem right while we are teaching. That could be a disaster for a teacher who is not well-prepared. Things may get stuck and everyone in classroom becomes frustrated. I don't want to imagine that to happen in my class. Therefore, to keep the classroom going, a back up plan is needed. Remember -- a back up plan.

"Keep learning and shining."

Week 3

Delicious week!

Teaching aural/oral skill is a main topic of the 3rd week of the course and we shared a lot on a discussion board for the websites we think they provide effective resources for aural/oral skill development. In fact, aural/oral skill is supposed to be the skill EFL learners found difficult due to some differences in sounds and features. Moreover, they rarely or scarcely have a chance to use or practice English with English speakers. Since this skill is a basic foundation for communicative competence, the students cannot turn their back on it.

Fortunately, many websites online have a vast variety of aural/oral practice exercises for teachers and students to try. And there are many authentic videos and audios for teachers to choose for their class. Many websites present listening activities in a more motivating and enjoyable way. This would help encourage EFL students to join in practicing listening and speaking with English speakers around the clock. Students can expose themselves to authentic language use and at the same time they become aware of stress, intonation, and rhythm. But the fact is there are many websites to be used, and teachers have to be selective to choose the right ones for their students. Well, to find ones to my class, it's very easy because we now have our own Delicious!

Links to Delicious of each individual classmates have also widen my views toward the WWW world where people all around can interact and share good things to one another -- just like the classmates and I have shared useful links for educational resources. It seems to me that the more we share, the more we get.

Also, this week we've shared what we've learned from studying the previous course projects. It's a good activity to let me see the overall concept of the final project of Webskills course. It seems that I have to make myself ready to exercise my creativity for the upcoming project. It may not be easy to come up with something creative at once. More reading, learning and observing are required. The first thing I can do now is make it clear about the learners and the setting. The project by Prem Bahadur Phyyak which I referred on the discussion board is going to be a good sample. It'll be good to do a needs survey to gain some information that would help for designing a right project for my students. There is still a long way to go. Cheer up, everyone.

Week 2

ABCD objective task

We as teachers all realize importance of a learning objective and so writing the clear one is necessarily important. Using the ABCD model has guided me a direction of writing a well-written objective. All components of ABCD model are related to one another. We have  Audience, we expect some Behaviors to be performed by them under certain circumstance or Condition and we need criteria or Degree to assess the behavior. When the objective is well set, we won't get lost on the way taking our students to reach the destination. Moreover, writing a learning objective, I think 'B' must be carefully written. It's important to look for the action verb which we have to keep in mind that it must be observable and measurable. Also, it is Bloom's taxonomy that can help and guide for a clearer and more specific performance we expect our students to perform. To be honest, it's good to have learned ABCD method along with Bloom's taxonomy.

Week 2

Keep searching

From now on, for me, "Google it", a familiar phrase of today's digital society, will not mean just using Google search engine to get some information anymore. That is because this week I have learned to use other options for doing a computer search. Many options provided on NoodleTools are new to me and I've tried several of them. It is 'iSeek Education' which I found the most interesting choice for me. Interestingly, while making a trial on Sweetsearch search engine, I came to realize that Sweetsearch provides more links that are very resourceful for education. For example, 'SweetSearch2day' provides many interesting topics such as today's news, word of the day, question of the day, all of these can be assigned as online learning activities for students to keep practicing their English bit by bit or day by day.

Actually, search engines available on the Internet as other Webskills classmates have shared, each of them may have benefits and weaknesses. I think we can add benefits and limit weaknesses by learning to try something new and welcome some changes for the better. Most of us are familiar with Google and tend to stick to it, but if it doesn't work well, try look for other options (choose the ones suggested by the kind classmates first).

The Internet has provided a plenty of interesting, authentic and updated materials and information. As an EFL teacher, I depend very much on search engines to find and gather information/ideas to be used and applied in my class. Thus, it's necessary for me as a teacher to be able to select the right ones to get the right information. Besides, introducing the students some optional search engines other than Google will be beneficial for them, too.Teaching students how to use search engine successfully is also important as to prepare them to use and make use of technology for better learning and ideally for a lifelong learning.

It's my job. I'll do my best.

Week 1

My first blogging 

One of the 1st week tasks is creating a blog at www.blogger.com and bit by bit I have been introduced to the world of technology. I would say that the Internet, in particular, has given a great challenge by letting me learn new things every day. A blog is one of those new things it has provided. As I am new to it, I was excited and a bit nervous along the way of creating the blog.
By following the instructions on the handout step by step, my blog has come to life! It's clearly seen that informative guidelines and clear instructions are necessary and important for students.
Here, I have become one of the students of the online learning and I think that if students are equipped with basic and proper tools, plus guidance and attention from teachers, online learning classroom could be an interesting choice.

Regarding to the use of blog for course reflection, it is a good way to let us (as students) express our thoughts towards the things we are learning in the course, exchange perspectives, and learn from one another. Personally, the blog provides me a space to practice and improve my writing skills. I have to be thoughtful and be more aware of what and how to write as it is published. It may take a lot of time and effort at first, yet I hope that I will enjoy writing a reflection online sooner or later. Moreover, I think a teacher is able to gain some benefits from students' class reflections. S/He will be able to get to know their students little by little, understand more about them as well as hear some feedback that would be useful to make the class more effective and productive.

Writing a reflection is a good way to self monitor and self assess yourself and when it is shared on the blog, you make use of online tools to exchange yourself with friends just a click away.

Week 1 has been a good starting step toward learning beyond the classroom walls of mine and I hope to have a happy time learning new things with all new friends. We are going to be happy students and happy teachers:).